1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photosensitive transfer material, and specifically to a photosensitive transfer material for producing a color filter for a color liquid crystal display, and also relates to a method for producing the color filter.
2. Description of the Related Art
Photosensitive transfer materials for producing color filters for color liquid crystal displays are publicly known. For example, a photosensitive transfer material having a temporary support, a thermoplastic resin layer, an alkali-soluble intermediate layer, and an alkali-soluble photosensitive resin layer including a pigment in this order, is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) Nos. 2002-219878 and 11-149008. In these inventions, the photosensitive resin layer of the photosensitive transfer material is attached to a substrate generally by using a “lamination method”, and thereafter, the temporary support is separated therefrom, followed by exposure and development to form an image on the substrate.
This method causes a problem in that when the temporary support is separated after the lamination step, the temporary support and the surface separated from the temporary support (i.e., the surface of the layer directly applied to the temporary support at the photosensitive transfer material formation step) are electrostatically charged.
This problem may also occur when the thermoplastic resin layer and the intermediate layer are separated from each other.
Although the charged voltage cannot be absolutely determined as it varies depending on the environmental temperature and humidity, and on the separation speed, it may be ±10 kV or more, which causes the following problems. A first problem is that dust is attracted by static electricity, which results in defective pixels. A second problem is that when a color filter is formed on an array of thin-film transistors (TFTs) on a transparent substrate (Color Filter On Array-CoA method), the thin-film transistors are broken by electrostatic charge caused by separation of the temporary support. Since the production speed of color filters has accelerated in recent years, consequently also accelerating the separation speed of temporary supports, these problems have become even more critical.
In order to solve these problems, there is a method in which a “static eliminator” is provided in the production line. However, the static eliminator cannot sufficiently reduce the voltage resulting from the electrostatic charge caused by the separation, and therefore there has been a need for countermeasures.
Thus, there has been a desire for a photosensitive transfer material, whereby when the thermoplastic resin layer and the intermediate layer are separated from each other, the surface potentials of the separated surfaces of the layers are low.
Further, there has also been a desire for a method for producing a color filter by using the photosensitive transfer material.